Our favorite morsel from the Web.
From restaurant reviews on Yelp to self-published cookbooks, DIY food writing is basking in a golden age. Of course, some is better than others, and some of the better surfaced in HubPages' Eat, Drink, and Be Hubbalicious contest, which ended last week. Beginning on June 1, readers filed articles organized around broad topics seleceted by the S.F.-based content site: recipes, world cuisines, ingredients. I should admit that I had the honor of being one of four judges. I should also admit it was a pleasure to help choose the contest's grand winner, which netted the writer $1,000: a piece named The Cuisine of the Creole Gullahs, by habee, a freelance writer and retired teacher. Habee's exploration of Gullah cooking is painstaking ― check it out. Then, get writing.
Follow us on Twitter: @SFoodie. Contact me at John.Birdsall@SFWeekly.com
Salcido and partners Nathan Smith and Daniel Gutierrez rolled out their downtown mobile eatery two weeks ago. She calls 51st State "a metaphorical road trip," a brainy way of saying that the short menu focuses on regional American cooking, which, when you think about it, might be one of the most underrepresented cuisines in the city.
"Here in San Francisco we obsess about Burmese food, but we don't even know about American food," Salcido says. Case in point: Brunswick stew. These days, the Virginia set piece is an amalgam of chicken and sausage, but how many times have you ever tasted it?
Brunswick stew is on 51st State's current seasonal menu. So's a wild rice and potato pancake and spinach salad with blue cheese, smoked trout, and marionberries (both representing for the Pacific Northwest), and crispy cornmeal quail with grits, and black-eyed pea salad, aka Texas caviar, both, naturally, from the South.
Smith and Gutierrez were college buddies at U.T. Austin a decade ago, before Smith went on to culinary school at CIA in Hyde Park, N.Y. Salcido grew up in San Francisco, studied PR at San Jose State, and went to work for Silicon Valley tech companies. She calls 51st State a five-year pipe dream.
As with all first-time entrepreneurs, it's been a process of learning.
Todd Richman from NYC will be shaking things up with both Chartreuse and Ilegal Mezcal. Richman is best known as "Chartreuse Todd," brand ambassador for the French liqueur made by Carthusian monks. Although you'll usually find him mixing drinks at bars as he tours across the country, his background has some culinary perspective ― he's spent time in the kitchens at both Eleven Madison and Blue Hill in New York.
Also on hand will be Ilegal Mezcal founder Steven Meyers to guide patrons on the process and profile of his newly introduced spirit. Beretta bar manager Ryan Fitzgerald, well known for his knowledge and ardor of agave-based spirits, will also be there, answering both questions and thirsts.
For our first "Ask a Brewer," Kushal Hall ― lead brewer at Speakeasy ― spoke easy.
SFoodie: When did you start brewing and what was your first homebrewed beer?
Hall: After getting my B.A. in Fine Art at UCSC, I found myself with absolutely no idea how to make rent, so I moved home to my parents' place for a while in Claremont, California, where I grew up. There, my dad and I started homebrewing together. I had recently discovered that there was beer with flavor after having a Black and Tan, which had spurred a great interest in dark beers in particular. My first brew was a partial grain stout that my dad and I brewed on the stovetop using an old recipe of my dad's, "Frothingslosh."
How'd you become a professional brewer? It didn't take long for me to realize that brewing beer would be a lot more fulfilling than shooting portraits of crying babies, and off to San Francisco I went. I started calling brewpubs and sending out resumes (embarrassing ones, listing all the types of beer I had homebrewed). I saw a Craigslist job posting to work on the packaging line at Speakeasy. That was my in; I spent the next nine months pestering every bit of information I could out of our packaging manager and the brewers while stacking cases and scrubbing floors. Soon I assisted operating our bottling line and training new employees on it. After some turnover on the brew side I was offered a position as the night brewer. I ecstatically accepted, and two years later I'm leading our three-person brew team.
On Thursday evening, the day after the official Bastille Day bashes go off around the city, AT&T is hosting a celebration in honor of French independence as the Giants take on the Mets. The ticket includes a seat in a special "French-American Heritage section," where we'd giggle into our glass of bubbly to see the food hawkers for once call out, "Get your morbier ... frites!" in zee most charming French accent.
To think that jammin' was a thing of the past;
We're jammin',
And I hope this jam is gonna last.
Bob Marley sang those couplets. He probably wasn't thinking about fruit preserves when he penned them, but analyzing them in that context yields ― if you will ― a ripe, juicy discussion all the same. Because jam is a thing of the past, a foodstuff that became popular via necessity ― because jam, unlike, say, a kingly roast turkey leg, is "gonna last." Middle Eastern countries, though likely not the "Babylon" of which Marley often sang, were responsible for creating the first fruit jams and jellies. Knights returning from the Crusades may have introduced preserves to European palates, and by the late Middle Ages, such products were, on the regular, getting smeared across the white-lead makeup-caked faces of ladies and lords.
facts about restaurant openings and closings in San Francisco.
Marcia G. of Tablehopper takes a look at Cafe des Amis (2000 Union), the 7,000-square-foot brasserie in Cow Hollow opened by the Bacchus Group, the owners of Spruce and Village Pub. She files an architectural report worthy of an interior design magazine, calling out the zinc bar, marble floors, gas lamps, and Ralph Lauren's own chandelier (well, sort of). The pitch: Classic French dishes from Ed Carew and Jason Deering; charcuterie program and raw bar; pan-France wine list and French cocktails. Looks like they're swinging for the bleachers. The projected opening date is July 21.
